Survival Of The Fittest

So, now that all the old versions are ported, it's (finally) time for me to dip my feet into some stuff I haven't read before. As such, I'm starting this critique thread--but there's a catch!

Basically, I want to read stuff that's new to me. I've read all of V4 and V5, so I won't be taking those. I don't like poking at works in progress, so V7 stuff is out too (plus I'm basically current). That leaves most of V1-3 and all of V6. I will note right now that I will not take V1-3 characters I have already read. Listing them all would be tedious and most are unlikely to be picked, so for simplicity's sake I'll say no winners (including V3!Dodd) and no V3 Endgamers and no Ninja Joe. If you somehow do hit a character I've read, I'll give you the chance to swap them and you'll keep your slot. V6 I'll take literally anyone.

I will only accept requests for a handler's own characters. I will read them in full, Pregame included, and give my thoughts overall. If a character was adopted, that's fine, but I'll mostly only talk about their tenure under the handler requesting the critique.

My level of depth will probably vary based on character length. Give me somebody who died after eight posts, and you'll get a very detailed analysis of those eight posts. Give me somebody who made it to the top ten and had eighteen threads and is one of the longest characters in the version, and maybe each thread gets a paragraph.

I will almost certainly find stuff I like and stuff I don't. Even my favorite characters have flaws and even my least favorites have highlights. That said, I will not mince words if ultimately I'm not a fan (or if I am!); I strive always to be constructive and fair, but that does not mean continuously positive. You'll get my opinion, basically.

This will likely be a slow project, maybe a character a week, maybe one every couple months, dunno. I may or may not post thoughts in segments instead of as one big write-up. It's whatever I feel like. I still owe a character in the V3 RAT, and I very much want to make sure I don't take on more than I can manage. As such, the initial queue will be limited to three characters. If you get into the first round, you'll not be eligible for hypothetical future rounds until I say otherwise, so more people get a chance for feedback.

Please link your characters' wiki pages. Thank you.

Critique Queue:
1. Blair Moore (Espi)
2. Jeremy Frasier (Yugikun)
3. Kimiko Kao (Deamon)

Hallo!

Blair is all yours :3

Jeremy Frasier. If possible it'd be nice if you could skip over his pregame please, but I'm fine with it if you want to read everything.

Kimiko Kao if you’d be so kind

olivia fischer ls

Agh, sorry I didn't catch this sooner. I'm going to keep the queue locked to three for the moment, just because I turned down a couple folks who approached me in chat and also I want to make sure to not promise more than I can deliver, but if all goes well and I do more I'll 100% hit you up when the next one's gonna open.

Alrighty. I’ve decided to go in chunks here, for preservation of momentum/ease of focus. I’m going through Blair from top to bottom, which means we start at the start: her profile. Normally I actually don’t read profiles unless something in a post confuses me, at which point I go take a look for context. I tend to backseat critique profiles when I do read them, and with V6 characters there’s a bonus very small probability that I actually looked over them for real at some point. I’m not going to be critiquing profiles like I’m on staff, though, because that sounds miserable and there’s no point in doing so posthumously.

Also, because it’s fun, I’ll lay out what I know about Blair going into this project here: Blair was Espi’s most-known/popular maybe? character in V6. She had a pretty long run, and was the last to die before Endgame. She's close to or right at the 25% of longest V6 characters. She suffered from some sort of chronic health concerns and she had cool hair. She killed some folks maybe mostly lategame, including Matt Moradi who was the most handsome dude in V6. I read her death for BDA and IIRC it was pretty solid but I had zero context. I may have read a bit of her Pregame but if so it’s not coming to me off the top of my head. That’s it for what I know about Blair!

With no further ado, her profile:

Blair is into poetry, roller skating, and a lot of internet-related/favored stuff like Tumblr and Doctor Who. This is good stuff because most of her hobbies have associative connections—you can tell right off the bat what sort of sphere she runs in but there’s also other stuff there to complicate it. She’s very thin and wiry. Blair is noted to dress more carefully and in nicer clothes when she’s feeling upbeat; for the trip she’s wearing a simple t-shirt and shorts with dirty shoes. The juxtaposition of this information suggests to me that Blair wasn’t having an awesome day even before the kidnapping, and if that’s right it’s a very cool way to hint at stuff quietly.

Blair is the middle child of a middle-class family; her siblings are close to her in age. As a child, Blair was discovered to have cystic fibrosis, which is nicely explained for the audience. Sufferers rarely live past their forties, and while Blair’s parents wanted her to be normal, they were also nervous for her. Blair struggled in school, but did well in sciences and was helped to discover an outlet for her negative emotions in poetry by a child psychologist.

Blair was somewhat spoiled by her parents, who always took her side and favored her, and so Blair struggled to accept fault in situations, which combined with her interest in internet forums led to get her banned from time to time, something which she took more or less in stride as everyone else’s fault. This also resulted in her having some arguments at school and becoming known as a love/hate sort of person. There’s an interesting element of hypocrisy in that she considers herself superior in most respects but is only a bit above average in her non-favored subjects and sort of scorns some folks who have certain similarities. She thinks geeks are “weird” and has also caught up on Dr. Who in its entirety.

Blair’s advantages are that she’s smart and confident and pretty fit. Her disadvanatges are that she’s got her health issues, she’s overconfident, and she’s abrasive.

Overall, I think Blair’s profile does a really good job of capturing and exploring her character while honing a few focal points. There are some good elements of implication rather than outright stating, and I have a pretty good idea what to expect. Blair sounds like a character who will make things happen, and who will get into some social spats. I’m intrigued to see her in action.

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Blair’s actual read-through begins with “Dying in the Light,” though this was chronologically written a ways into her Pregame run. That’s an interesting quirk of Memories—they come first in the timeline but are often written later on.

The thread begins with Blair home from school, sick—she’s got a chest infection, and while at first she was sort of glad to get out of a test, this time things are worse than usual and she has to drag herself downstairs by force of will. The setup is good and provides strong characterization for Blair; her condition has normalized some stuff to her so she doesn’t take it super duper seriously (like chest infections being of less concern than the test she gets to skip). That said, I think there’s a slight missed opportunity in the pacing of stuff before the section break in her first post. The norm is established, then we learn that this time is a deviation from the norm, stakes (and high ones, for Pregame) are introduced in that Blair’s alone in her room without anyone likely to check on her and is having trouble breathing, but then we zip along to her making it down the stairs and getting help from her mom in short order. I know it’s the setup to the thread more than the point of it, but I think lingering in those moments and in the struggle for safety could’ve added a lot of heft to the scene while also playing up Blair’s unique predicament.

We pick up with Blair on the couch, medicated, watching Doctor Who and texting with Caedyn Miller. They’re friends, and Blair is glad for the sincere show of care from Caedyn. This is a nice bit of contrast because Caedyn feels slightly bad about having taken a bit to notice her best friend’s absence from class, but chooses not to disclose that in the text. We have two characters physically separated and operating with different understandings of the interaction, which is a fun setup, and the specific interaction isn’t anything big, just kind of casual mildly-out-of-the-ordinary stuff which lets a lot of indirect characterization shine through.

Blair likes to text in grammatically correct sentences. What sort of freak does that? >< In seriousness, it’s a great thing to see discussed, especially because the contrast between her writing and Caedyn’s has already become clear. Blair allegedly doesn’t mind other people being sloppy, but at the same time notes she’d feel like she was coming off stupidly should she do so, which suggests a quiet feeling of superiority in her style. This fits what the profile has led us to expect well.

Blair’s posts are generally a combination between her side of the text conversation and her experience of her disease. There’s a good moment where she laments how unglamorous her chronic disease is and wishes it could be something less snotty. I like it because she’s not even going “Why do I have to be sick always?” and is instead at “Why this sickness?”

Caedyn has a bit where she has a half second of self doubt and buries it under the idea that nothing can ever be her fault. This is intriguing in this context because Blair has exactly the same mentality, which both suggests how they could have an understanding and also makes me expect hideous doom for the relationship at some point in the future, especially since this is Memories. We’ll see how that turns out.

Things come full circle as Blair returns to the couch with food and has a mean thought about Caedyn that she doesn’t share. It further pushes the parallels between them; I want to say Blair is a smidge more self-aware as she just goes “Yeah, I thought it and it’s okay ‘cause it’s just in my head,” but they’re two peas in a pod on the whole.

Caedyn’s last post has her stop texting to ditch the fuzz, and Blair doesn’t explicitly close out the thread, which is a shame as Caedyn’s post implies that she doesn’t actually pick the chat back up promptly and I want to see how Blair reacts to that. It’s not the end of the world, though.

Overall, the good sides of this thread are the characterization, dynamics, and the insight into what “normalcy” is for Blair and for the relationship. It’s all very solid stuff and I feel like I have a feel for how she works already. I’m also very curious about the dynamic and the two-sides-of-the-same-coin theme being set up.

What I think could use some more love is setting and staging. A big intriguing thing in this thread is that both characters are in super different locations and situations—Caedyn being sneaky in class, and Blair bored on the couch hacking up her lungs while watching TV. Each narrative only touches on one aspect of the setting in any real way, though, and even then loosely—Caedyn’s talking about the teacher and Blair the blankets. I think what would’ve really put this one over the top and given it more pop on more than an interiority level would’ve been, like, one or two sentences of surroundings and scenery action per post. Is it dim in the room where Blair is, making her feel more like an invalid, or too bright maybe? Does she pause the show to text, or try to track it with split attention? Are other people being called on in history? How’s the lesson progressing towards the inevitable test? That sort of thing, just as a sprinkling for flavor.

On the whole, a good opening thread and I’m excited to roll into Blair’s present day Pregame story.

Blair’s first present day thread is “Not On Target,” and she opens it. The thread is, fittingly enough, set in Target. A fun piece of trivia: there is no Target in real life Kingman, but a Walmart instead. We (V6 Pregame staff) changed that just to be sure to provide a setting that wasn’t weirdly cribbed from real life.

Blair is in Target because she messed up her favorite shirt while cooking. There are some nice bits of detail here. Blair looks down on people who get their outfits from Target, despite the fact that it turns out her favorite shirt is sold at Target, echoing her periodic hypocrisy. She’s also concerned about her looks, and is more upset that she ruined her shirt than that she almost hurt her hand. This brings her image-consciousness to the fore, echoing her upset about how unglamorous her illness is, and also shows her as somewhat used to personal harm. She’s a little winded, too, and frustrated that she’s having trouble finding “her” shirt. It’s a really nice opening post for Blair on the whole (and this was, I believe, her very first IC post). We get a little feel for her in a situation that is to the reader pretty low-stakes but that matters to Blair, and a number of her core traits pop up in a short span of time.

Scarlett McAfee turns up, which surprises me somewhat because I forgot once again that she was adopted from RC (I only really know her SC2 iteration, which was Prim start to end). Scarlett greets Blair but quietly muses that Blair’s name is weird (and it is—I sort of hope to eventually hear where it comes from) and that Blair herself is kinda arrogant, but hopes maybe she’s nice-arrogant. It’s cool to see the world reacting appropriately to Blair, and to see a quirk (her name) noted.

Blair is judgmental towards Scarlett for the girl’s Star Wars fascination, incorrectly stating that Star Wars movies last came out in the 80s and drawing a parallel to fans of old Doctor Who. It’s nice because it shows Blair totally sure in her assessment while also totally wrong about a basic fact. Blair doesn’t like Scarlett, who she thinks is too cheery. I like the thought and the vibe, though Blair’s reaction (giving the girl the total cold shoulder) is a bit strong and seems likely to result in exactly the opposite of her desired aim (that is to say, when totally ignored it strikes me as more likely that Scarlett will think she’s not been heard and come up and say hi again from closer, whereas an unenthusiastic and frosty “Hi, Scarlett,” would scare her off better). The ignoring isn’t horrible or anything, but it’s an odd moment of social unawareness on Blair’s part I’m not totally sure about.

In the next post, Scarlett repeats herself and gets closer, so good to know my predictive skills remain honed. They’re joined by Irene Djezari, who is friends with Blair and on friendly enough terms with Scarlett, and who calls out to both, making further ignoring a difficult prospect indeed. One big thing I like from Irene’s entry that the rest of the thread could maybe do with a smidge more of: staging, setting, and surroundings. Irene’s post is very physical, while Blair and Scarlett have been majority cerebral (not to say Irene neglects that).

“Suddenly a person burst through the clothes like the Kool-Aid guy but for tacky things.” <- This line made me laugh. Blair is forced to acknowledge Scarlett, but thinks to herself she’ll try to spin her companions into some sort of entertainment together. I’m glad she adapts to the circumstance. I also like how, once again, the way Blair thinks of others and the way they think of her does not gel. Irene thinks they’re friends (though is aware Blair is probably making fun of her sometimes). Blair, meanwhile, sees Irene only as “a big step up from Scarlett.”

Blair’s laughter makes her coughing flare up, which worries Irene, and we learn that Blair keeps her health on the down low where possible. I’m not totally convinced of how possible it’d actually be, though—it’s a moment that feels like a slight OOC misalignment as Blair’s narrative tries to cut Irene slack for not being aware of what’s going on, while Irene’s narrative actually seems decently aware of what’s going on but just not quite as explicit as it could be in spelling that out. Scarlett takes the fall to clean things up, hoping she won’t catch Blair’s cold and also totally missing the insinuation that Irene’s sister hit on her.

Blair does a bit of musing on relationships and romance. It has one really good bit and one I’m not so sold on. The good first: she’s not experienced with flirting, isn’t really the target of much of it, and isn’t happy about that. This goes back to a bit in the first post where she muses about the shirt she wanted as “sexy” but seems somewhat unsure about that, and further ties with her mixed feelings about her image. The part I’m not so keen on is that she has a “not that I have anything against gay people...” moment that spirals a little and ends with “oh boy she was digging a hole for no reason.” The thing is, Blair doesn’t say any of this—the awkwardness is in the phrasing but the phrasing exists only in her narrative. This comes up actually fairly often on SOTF, and usually feels off, like the character is aware they’re being read by somebody and that their thoughts are laid out in neat print on screens and I don’t think the distraction that tone causes justifies the technique unless the punchline is really, really good. This one’s just sort of okay.

Irene happens to pick up the exact shirt Blair wants, and that seizes all of Blair’s attention. There’s another bit of slight narrative distance here where it’s noted that Blair doesn’t really have any attention to spare for Scarlett due to her focus, but this is a lot more successful because it’s signposting important information to both the reader and the others in the thread—namely, that while Blair is blowing off Scarlett the other girl is still a remembered and valued part of the scene. It also feels more in keeping with a neutral distanced narrative voice, as opposed to one that has an ideological stance. Scarlett zones out, Blair has another coughing fit with some nice gross detail, and conversation continues. Blair invites Irene to lunch, Irene declines and tries to pass the invitation to Scarlett, and Blair withdraws it.

Blair ducks out of the thread, feeling just a bit remorseful for being harsh and hasty. This is an interesting moment for me because I actually read Blair’s exit as fairly graceful and polite—yes, she’s sort of snubbing Scarlett, but in a generally reasonable way as she extricates herself from an awkward situation of Irene’s devising. Blair is generally loathe to admit fault when she messes up, so I’m curious about her choice to accept blame for something that she’s actually not really responsible for. I’m not sure to what extent this is an intentional move or not, but it does suggest to me that perhaps Blair misplaces her feelings of guilt/regret onto stuff more easily brushed under the rug/that nobody else is going to give her grief over.

On the whole, this is a good first thread for present-day-Pregame Blair. It introduces the core aspects of her character, walks us through how she interacts with others, and gives her some good beats and moments of indirect characterization. On a Pregame extremeness scale of one to ten, this thread rates about a three—there’s mild conflict but nobody actually ends up upset by it, and things are generally harmonious and peaceful bar some very mild negative feelings. Everyone’s more or less on-point for that vibe, and the three have solid chemistry for their dynamic—you can sort of see why Blair likes Irene more than Scarlett. Blair’s characterization is strong here and her voice mostly lands, and when she has physical beats (like swallowing the phlegm) they’re effective. I do feel like a little more dwelling in moments and a little more sense of place and surroundings would help add that extra zing and pop, though; I’ve spent a lot of time rooting around in Targets and I feel like that helps me parse stuff here, but just a little more brief, conscious staging could do wonders.

Blair’s second thread is “What a Day,” which is set on the Cochise school grounds and is once more opened by Blair. It kicks off promisingly, as follows: “Blair was eating her lunch outside, in the sun, because the cafeteria was disgusting.” This is a great hook because it’s full of voice and narrative confidence, relating a seeming fact about the world that’s actually a fact about Blair. The next paragraph has a lot of the little setting details/scene stuff I’ve been wanting in the past couple threads, and I’m glad to see it. There’s a slight bit of tangling in the phrasing, though—it reads like voice going just a smidge too far which I think actually weakens the punch line of Blair, in her distraction, setting her lunch tray down not on the table but a few inches short of it and spilling her food everywhere.

From this misstep, Blair expands on her state of being, as a coughing fit reminds her that everything in her life sucks today. It’s a great look into her processes, as she focuses on and accentuates the negative. I also like that she actually looks forward to her scheduled meeting with her therapist—it’s a good bit of characterization and shows a positive outlet in her life. One little wording nitpick: “But for now, Blair was content to stew at her table, leaving her now-ruined food on the ground where it had fallen, soup seeping into the ground.” <-the reuse of ground twice in one sentence is a bit distracting, and I think there’d be some more impact by swapping the second occurrence to “dirt.”

The second post in the thread introduces an observer to Blair’s mishap in the form of Alessio Rigano. Alessio’s intro establishes him as having been already present, which changes the dynamic of the scene a good bit—now Blair has not just wrecked her lunch, she’s mildly humiliated herself in front of someone else. This is the sort of thing to be a little careful dropping into threads without checking in with other handlers. I have no clue if that happened here or not, but in this case it’s not a big deal and presumably Espi could’ve PMed to object/discuss changes if need be. Basically, this manner of entrance defines a few things about Blair (that she was either unaware of her observer or else rated him below mention in her first post) and fiddles with the gauge on the scene’s stakes.

The pair are joined by Brendan Harte, who is also observing and who tries to do something nice for Blair, offering her an apple from his lunch and mildly chastising Alessio for laughing at her. This again plays with the dynamic; Brendan is choosing a side and a three-character scene is often unstable and full of potential for shifts in loyalty (NAFT has a nice theory about this). In this instance, I’m predicting Blair may not be super duper grateful for the offer—her mental state seems stormy and the boys are unwittingly offering themselves as targets. Slight staging thing: Brendan’s location isn’t quite clear and it would be nice to know to place everyone and read physical cues.

Blair’s post actually takes that into her own hands some—she stalks towards them (establishing that notable distance was present). Her face is noted as wrinkled in anger, and there’s a little aside (“Not a good look for her.”). I’d like to take a moment to dig into this because it’s an odd instant of breaking PoV (probably, at least). Who thinks the look doesn’t suit Blair? Her? The narrator? It’s not awful here, but when it feels like a narrative intrusion it can come off as the narrative pushing the reader towards a certain interpretation a little too directly. If it’s Blair’s take, that can be made explicit, and there's also a way to take a middle path and cheat (“Not a good look for her, she always thought, but like usual she was unaware she was making the face in the moment.”).

I’m apparently in tune with Blair by now because she does indeed yell at both boys—this is a good thing; that I can predict her actions pretty well in this sort of situation means she’s been characterized consistently. Her reaction is on-point and does cool stuff with the thread’s dynamic, specifically by shifting the web of alliances so she’s opposed to the other two when Brendan was trying to ally with her. That said, a minor thing I’d’ve maybe liked to see shifted: Blair escalates by trying to slap Alessio’s cookie out of his hand and then chews out Brendan. The thing is, because the cookie slap isn’t approved GMing, she makes the attempt and the post moves on without its success or failure being noted. This creates an awkward moment of pause/hanging suspense. What I’d’ve liked to see, I think, would’ve either been PMing RC to get approval and then just slapping the cookie loose (or missing) or else inverting the order—let Blair round on Brendan first and then amp up to confronting Alessio (could even keep the “...and YOU” vibe, probably even with a bit more impact). This would let the swing be the very last action in the post, and since Alessio’s next in post order the baton toss would be very neat, letting him open with the success or failure of the attempt without kicking us back chronologically.

Without spending too long on it, Alessio’s response is great despite the fact that he does absolutely nothing but squint at Blair a bit. This leaves moving the action further to Brendan, who takes up the mantle nicely by alienating both other parties, telling them they should apologize to each other and calling Blair’s reaction immature. This thread is a great example of the triangle style, and in fact this post makes the last line of Alessio’s post before it (“Alessio was Clint Eastwood.”) even better. It’s a three-way showdown, power and allegiance constantly evolving.

Blair shows this by trying to turn things around and get Brendan back on her side, albeit in an imperfect manner. She’s pretty self-aware here, in an interesting way; she knows she’s being a jerk (but doesn’t care) and is uncomfortable with having to own up and accept any blame. I really like that her idea of “accepting blame” is to offer an “I’m sorry but here’s why it’s everyone else’s fault...”—it’s a great thing because Blair thinks she’s being smooth and apologizing but she doesn’t know how to do it right.

Alessio doesn’t buy it. His reaction is just as non-smooth as Blair’s, though, and he offers even less token contrition, setting Brendan more solidly against him. Blair actually judges Brendan for falling into her trap, which I like; it fits well with her sense of superiority.

“It's fine, Al. It can be hard to fess up to your mistakes.” Pot, kettle, etc. Blair says she’ll go buy Alessio something to make up for ruining his cookie but instead just ditches, thinking she’ll maybe fake sick and go home. I’m actually sorry to leave the thread—it’s been full of interesting happenings and more direct conflict than what we’ve seen to this point.

The best parts of this thread are the shifting tension and alliances and the characterization—it’s a showdown thread that evolves and escalates due to Blair’s negative frame of mind, and every character gets to do stuff at basically every stage. I think the thing that’s perhaps a stumbling block here is that there are several points where Blair’s narrative goes a bit out of its way to remind the reader she’s the bad guy in the situation, when it’s pretty obvious just from what she’s doing. When it’s her self-awareness flaring up and her making excuses for herself, that works great, but when it’s detached from that and its own odd thing it messes with the flow/immersion for little benefit because it’s telling us what the rest of the writing is already conveying well.

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From here, Blair moves on to “Stuck,” a three-shot thread with no interactions with other player characters. Right off, the thread establishes that sleep is something Blair has trouble with—her health issues make it physically difficult for her to rest, and her bad habits exacerbate this. There is, I feel, a slight misstep in the opening three paragraphs, in that we’re told that Blair knew something was wrong right when she woke up, then we pull back to get some habitual detail on what the norm is for her, then we go back into scene but with the same rough content as the first paragraph repeated. It’s not a huge deal, though, since the other bits are good stuff.

And, of course, the actual meat of what’s happened is also good stuff. Blair’s younger sister, the one from her profile who kind of resents her, has poured glue in her hair while she slept. The reason behind this is brushed off pretty casually by Blair’s narrative (Blair made fun of her for being in a musical), which shows pretty nicely why Miley might pour glue on her in the first place. Blair thinks her sister’s show of remorse is fake, which is also a nice bit of characterization for Blair, who we’ve seen fake remorse recently; she assumes others act as she does.

Blair is totally incensed because her hair has to be cut off due to the glue. We’ve seen before how important image is to Blair, so it’s clear why this hits hard. There’s also a nice bit where Blair goes from loving her red bangs that are cut off to, a couple sentences and a section break later, writing off red as “not her color.” She tells herself, again and again, that everything’s fine, but even as she does, she’s already plotting revenge.

In the next post, the time for that revenge has come. Blair is at home sick, again, and once again seems to be kind of taking advantage of that fact. What Blair actually does is also pretty brilliant. Her sister is “mildly” allergic to peanuts, so Blair dumps some peanut oil into her sister’s favorite snack, reasoning to herself that it’ll just make Miley break out some and really, fair is fair. This is some excellent work selling Blair’s mental state, and showing that she’s a. pretty petty and b. maybe not quite as smart and self-aware as she thinks.

Fortunately for Blair, the plan does go off without killing her sister or anything, though she gets caught out pretty easily. Still, she muses to herself that it was all worth it, mirroring the motivation she projected onto Miley earlier.

We cut forward to Blair getting her hair fixed by a friend of her mom’s. This is a good moment to mention that I went and checked, and this thread actually sets up a change in hair from Blair’s Pregame profile to her final one. That’s cool! Blair’s super judgmental of the woman doing her a big favor for free, which is par for the course. She comes off as nicely, casually entitled, brushing off the woman’s attempts to make conversation. This builds to a nice bit where Blair is pleasantly surprised that her cut is quite good.

On the whole, this is probably my favorite Blair thread to date. It hits that nice sweet spot where something big is happening but not something crazy or unrealistic or that you’d necessarily remember without prompting in a decade or two. Blair gets to be both victim and perpetrator, and has sympathetic moments while also probably being the villain of the scene at the end of the day. There’s also a lot of cool staging and voice and physical detail here, making it a very controlled scene.

My only quibble would be: I think there’s a bit of a missed opportunity in not actually seeing what the fallout for Blair’s revenge is for her, because a part of the dynamic with her sister is that their parents favor Blair. There’s a smidge of that in how they set her up to get her hair fixed, but it’s a bit distanced, and I think taking just a moment to draw out the inequality—which really isn’t Blair’s fault at all—would help cast some light on how the family dynamic is in large part to blame for Blair being how she is (and her sister too, for that matter).